I was trained in finance, tested in private aviation sales, and was a part of Gowalla being acquired by Facebook and Waze being acquired by Google. I now am the President and Chief Revenue Officer of StockUp, the company building the shopping list that tells you where to shop.
If you're interested following along on this wild ride, you can actually Follow Me on Twitter

Going Viral For Something You Didn't Do

It’s possible in the past three days you’ve seen my name associated with this photo. It’s been on every major news outlet in the country and has run in newspapers on all six continents. I have been quoted as a blogger, journalist, businessman, Manhattan resident, and even as the man in the photo himself. Only one problem: I wasn’t on that flight and I didn’t take that photo.

On Thursday, my friend took a flight from Reykjavik, Iceland to New York‘s JFK airport. He was sitting across the aisle from the man in the picture and had a front row seat to the wild times that ensued. This passenger drank an entire bottle of duty free liquor early on in the flight and became belligerently drunk and proceeded to physically harm other passengers and scream the plane was going to crash. He had to be restrained by fellow passengers and bound to his seat with plastic ties and duct tape that the crew of the IcelandAir flight crew keep on hand “just in case.” When the flight landed, and he was taken off the plane by police, my friend posted this photo on Facebook and recounted the story to his friends.

It was quickly shared by friends and friends of friends more than 400 times. My friend changed the privacy settings for the photo on Facebook so that not everyone could see it as it was getting a little bit more attention than he wanted. I had shared it with some of my friends and had asked his permission to post it on my blog. He had agreed and it was shortly after that that Buzzfeed picked it up. That was early on Friday morning.

By the time I got out of my lunch meeting, the New York Post had run the photo and had me listed as the drunk man himself. I had voicemails on my personal cell phone from CNN, Good Morning America, Fox News, Inside Edition, and the Daily Mail. I checked my email and found over 30 press inquiries in the past hour from the contact form on my blog. And perhaps most unexpectedly, a text from my Mom saying that people were calling my childhood home looking for me and hoping to get a quote about my experience on the flight.

A quote about the flight that I wasn’t on. About the picture that I didn’t take.

Cover of the New York Post 1/5/2013

After finishing my afternoon meetings and heading home for the week, I was able to begin returning phone calls and clearing up the story about where the photo came from and that my friend who took the photo would prefer to be left out of the three ring circus that resulted from it being posted. But as the stories continued to appear online, and even the correct version of the story with full credit to my “anonymous friend,” more and more details were uncovered by persistent reporters hounding officials at JFK Airport and spokespersons for IcelandAir.

As of this morning, there are over 290 news stories associated with my name on Google News. My blog doubled the traffic from the month of December, all just in the last three days. I had reporters camping out in the lobby of my apartment building this weekend hoping to get more details that I had already told them I didn’t have, and also had news outlets offer to pay me to get my anonymous friend to come forward to give a statement.

All about a flight I wasn’t on and a photo that I didn’t take.

While “going viral” is something that scares promiscuous college kids and thrills marketing executives, I learned this weekend it is definitely not for the faint of heart.

For more adventures in the art and science of hustle, feel free to follow along: @andyellwood

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As Andy Warhol said everyone will be Famous for 15 minutes in the future, perhaps you projected out to the Universe that you wanted more Traffic and recognition out there in Cyber World, everything happens for a reason and I am sure something positive will come of this. 2013 is looking up already and yes it would have been very interesting.

Crazy story, Andy! It’s amazing how things we post can take on a life of their own. Controlling information flows is challenging. We often make the mistake on social networks of assuming we’re just sharing with the group of people we’re friends with. Thanks to the nature of privacy settings on the site as well as human behavior, that’s not often the case.

Andy Warhol did say that “In the future everyone will be Famous for Fifteen minutes”.. Perhaps you had projected to the Universe that you wanted more Traffic flow for your blog?? I think something positive will come out of this and 2013 is looking up already.